What a State: Why the U.S. is Still Bad for Your Health (Policy)

Calum Paton

International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2025, vol. 40, issue 6, 1326-1334

Abstract: The second Trump administration's centrepiece legislation, the modestly‐named Big Beautiful Bill, passed by the House of Representatives and going through the Senate at time of writing, offers an opportunity to reflect upon how the U.S. state affects health policy and the prospects for equitable access to affordable healthcare. Is the U.S. still an outlier (by comparison with Europe and much of the world), in that its many of its citizens are either uncovered, poorly covered or tenuously and only temporarily covered by health insurance? The answer is yes. And the chipping away at Obamacare and Medicaid by Trump 2.0 (learning from his failure to repeal Obamacare in 2017) as part of the Big Beautiful Bill, shows us that it is easier for the Right to dismantle progressive social legislation than it is for the Liberal‐Left to assemble it. To understand why, and to revisit why the U.S. polity struggles to enact progressive healthcare reform, we have to understand the effect of the U.S. state (i.e. political structure) upon public policy. This article revisits the nature of that state, to depict the underlying causes of ‘American exceptionalism’ which are partly ideological but also more significantly institutional than often realised.

Date: 2025
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